Are we now seeing signs of a “bounce” for President Barack Obama and the Democrats? New Gallup Poll polling numbers now up show a shift from what was up just earlier today, based on daily tracking numbers averages.
UPDATE: It’s Editor-in Chief Frank Newport says it does look like a bounce:
President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party look as if they are getting at least a preliminary bounce from their convention.
Today’s (Friday, Sept. 7) Gallup Daily tracking update puts Obama’s job approval rating at 52%, the highest it has been since May 2011, after the killing of Osama bin Laden. Obama has also moved to a 48% to 45% lead over Mitt Romney among registered voters in the election tracking, up from Obama’s 47% to 46% margin over the last nine days.
Gallup averages the job approval rating on a three-day rolling average, meaning that today’s report encompasses interviewing conducted over the three days of the Democratic Convention in Charlotte — Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Gallup’s report of presidential election preferences are, on the other hand, based on a seven-day rolling average stretching from last Friday, the day after the GOP Convention ended, through last night.
This uptick in these two indicators stands in contrast to tracking during the Republican Convention, during which there was no discernible bounce on the ballot tracking. Gallup does not track other measures on Romney that would be comparable to the job approval figure for Obama.The current data are quite preliminary and for the most part don’t reflect the influence of Obama’s late Thursday night speech, if any.
Key focus points now will be the ultimate magnitude and duration of the apparent Democratic bounce going forward. By the middle of next week we will have a good feel for both of these dimensions.
My earlier post:
1. Obama’s approval rating is now at 52% approval versus 43% disapproval — numbers that are likely to go down given today’s lousy employment figures.
2. In the matchup with Romney, earlier today Gallup showed Obama one point ahead of Romney. The new numbers put him three points ahead: 47% to 45%.
As we noted earlier HERE a Reuters/IPSOS poll on Thursday showed no bounce.
The way polling works on election year, expect the Gallup numbers to get little or no play on some partisan sites or there will be a discussion about Gallup having bad methodology.
But as of now Gallup is showing some shift in Obama’s numbers upwards. The real answer as to whether there is any kind of a bump is what other polls show as well and how the average of polls looks.
And a bump may be a bump but it generally vanishes.
UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan weighs in.
Photo: shutterstock.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.